


More Than This Provincial Town

by viridianmasquerade



Category: Beauty and the Beast (1991)
Genre: F/F, Fluff, Pining, Prompt Fill, they actually have official names and those are what they are
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-21
Updated: 2014-01-21
Packaged: 2018-01-09 12:38:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1146082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viridianmasquerade/pseuds/viridianmasquerade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Paula, youngest of the blond triplets most often seen fawning over Gaston, has a secret.</p>
            </blockquote>





	More Than This Provincial Town

"What’s wrong with her?" Claudia snaps, eyeing Belle as she turns Gaston down for the fourth time this week.

"She’s crazy," Laura says, green eyes flashing, jealous.

"He’s gorgeous," Paula adds, lamely. She’s supposed to hate Belle the way her sisters do, for the dual crimes of stealing Gaston’s attention and being utterly disinterested in it; lately she can’t summon the venom. What’s the point of hating a girl for not wanting someone? Even if she is so carelessly beautiful and so beautifully careless it makes Paula want to scream.

Sometimes at night she lies awake and thinks about the way Belle handles Gaston, deflecting and redirecting with such politely obvious disdain. She wishes Claudia and Laura could learn to do the same, but they insist on throwing themselves (and therefore Paula, because the triplets have always done things as a set) at him as though it will change anything.

Maybe she learned it in one of those books she’s always reading. Paula wishes she could ask her, but Claudia and Laura would never be interested, and it’s not as though she could go without them. Claudia would never let her live it down, fraternizing with the enemy (well, Claudia wouldn’t use that word, but Belle said it once and Paula relishes the sound).

Like the rest of the town, her sisters, Claudia particularly, disapprove of women reading, learning. It isn’t the point of women, they say, the point of women is to find a husband and have children. Paula would have agreed with them, used to laugh at the idea of being anything but a housewife until Belle came, wandering the cobblestones with a different book every day, talking about adventure and excitement and romance.  
Paula bites her lip. Thinking about adventure and excitement and romance and Belle all at once is enough to get her pulse racing, and she shakes her head to get rid of it because girls and romance aren’t supposed to go together like that.

In her reverie she’s missed most of what is going on, including whatever Gaston says to provoke Belle this time.

"Gaston, you are positively primeval," Belle says.

Primeval: she likes the sound of that one, too. She snuck off to the bookstore last week (and wasn’t that terrifying, just the thought that her sisters would realize a stop at the bakery didn’t normally take that long) and bought a dictionary, keeps it under her bed and looks up the words Belle throws around like grain to hens. Gaston takes it like a compliment but it’s obvious from her tone that it’s anything but. Paula wonders what it means, and looks forward to checking her dictionary later. She wishes she had the courage to ask Belle herself, but a dictionary will have to do for now.

"That crazy old loon, he needs all the help he can get," Gaston says dismissively, and laughs with LeFou (as if LeFou should be laughing at anyone).

Paula likes the way Belle freezes when Gaston insults her father, likes the way her fists ball up like they are doing now, wonders if one day she will dare to strike him and what will happen when she does. Once she woke sweating from a dream of it, Belle slapping Gaston and turning around to kiss Paula in celebration. She tried half-heartedly to forget about it but she knows she never will.

This is the other reason she won’t talk to Belle, even if she could get away from her sisters; girls don’t kiss other girls, not in this little town. Belle is different but that doesn’t mean she’s different like that, and Paula’s terrified to find out one way or the other.

For now, it makes her happy to watch Belle when she can with her nose in her book and her head in the clouds, to listen when she talks and relish the sound of the words she uses, to learn what they mean like they’re a language only Paula and Belle share. For now, it’s enough.

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt fill for a tumblr anon who asked for "either Pocahontas/Nakoma or one of the three blondes in the background of Beauty and the Beast secretly pining for Belle." I went for the bimbettes because I think they're cute! Also, I know Beauty and the Beast better than Pocahontas.


End file.
